


Semantics, the Valentine Kind!

by sidnihoudini



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-08
Updated: 2007-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-26 03:30:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The 14th sneaks up on Patrick like the after effects of bad Chinese food. One minute he’s playing the set, watching everyone in the crowd sing along to the words he’s been living by for years, and the next he’s in the dressing room, unplugging his laptop from the wall and realizing that it is in fact that, the 14th. </p><p><i>D-day</i>, he thinks to himself miserably, tucking the power cord into his case. <i>Or, V-Day.</i></p><p>Pete follows Andy through the door with a huge grin on his face, one hand itching at a spot behind his ear. “It was just so <i>loud</i>, man,” He’s saying, glancing over at Patrick quickly. Patrick zips his case up. </p><p><i>Here it comes, </i>Patrick thinks, dropping his laptop case alongside all the junk to be carted back out to the bus. <i>Here comes the grand gesture, Andy’s probably in on it, too.</i></p><p>“Anyway,” Pete is still saying, unzipping his hoodie, entirely involved in his conversation with Andy. </p><p>Patrick hovers until it’s time to load, but Pete never does a thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Semantics, the Valentine Kind!

_“I never liked that analogy because water and oil don’t need each other.”_

.

“I mean it,” Patrick threatens, pulling the guitar strap over his head. They’re both sweaty, thrumming with energy, and arguing in the middle of side stage. “Pete.”

Smirking, Pete looks up from his bass strings, and runs the back of his hand over his forehead.

“Dude,” He says, wiping off the back of his hand with the front of his jeans. Patrick tries to look as menacing as possible, but it just makes Joe walk by with a half smile on his face, and pat him on the back. “Joe, man, come on -- agree with me on this.”

Holding his hands up, Joe sidesteps an amp. “No way, I’m not getting into the middle of this again.”

*

Cause see, it happens every year. Somewhere in the first week of February, Pete starts getting all these big ideas -- we’ll do something like (No, Pete) or I’ll buy you a (shut up, what the fuck, get out of my bunk) come on just let me (Pete, seriously -- let go of my ankle!) -- all these big ideas and tinfoil hearts in his eyes. 

It’s been happening for as long as Patrick can remember. Or, the last three years at least.

“We’re playing a show that night,” He says, sidestepping the grab Pete makes for him.

Pete balks. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Fine, go out and buy me a dozen roses or something, so I can light them on fire, chuck them out of the moving bus, and be _done_ with it,” Patrick heaves, standing in the little rumbling kitchen with his arms crossed over his chest and his fly undone.

Frowning, Pete flicks something from the table. Patrick feels it make impact on the outside of his wrist. Silently _eww_ -ing, he grimaces and shakes it off quickly.

“You’re so dramatic,” Pete says, those stupid dog-eyes looking up at Patrick, like he just hit him in the nose with a rolled up newspaper or something.

“Who wanted to go to the Empire State Building just to see the lights!?”

Pete rolls his eyes, and crosses one leg over the other. “They’re just supposed to be _pretty_ , okay.”

“Fuck off,” Patrick scowls. “You just wish you were Meg Ryan, with the big red heart lit up, and --“

“ _I’m_ Meg Ryan?” Pete asks, pointing to himself, just for reference. “No way!”

Patrick gapes. “You’re a big girl!”

“You’re the one who--“

*

In one of the bunks, Joe grimaces and slides his ear phones on.

*

“That doesn’t count!” Patrick argues. “It was _your_ idea!”

Pete looks out the window, and crosses his arms over his chest, too. 

“I’m going to go to my bunk, fall asleep -- because I _can_ \-- and not listen to your whining about fucking _Valentine’s_ Day,” Patrick explains, pushing away from the counter, letting his arms fall down to his sides. “So _goodnight_.”

Continuing to pick his fingernails, Pete mutters at Patrick’s back, “You’re totally Annie Reed.”

*

At some point in the night, Patrick hazes in and out of sleep at the sound of his bunk curtain sliding open, the metal scratch against metal. He squints, pulling his face away from the pillow with a big crease mark across his cheek.

All he can make out is Pete’s profile against the dim interior of the bus.

“What…” He manages, one eye opened slightly bigger than the other. Pete crosses his arms over his chest, and looks petulant.

“Look, all you have to do is come --“

Patrick turns over with a rebellious grunt, and blocks the rest of Pete’s reasoning out.

*

“Please, for the love of all that is holy,” Andy says to him the next day, in the middle of sound check, in the middle of the fucking _stage_. “Just do it. From January 31st straight through to February 16th, all I hear is him bitching about the semantics of Valentine’s Day.”

Patrick aggressively tunes his guitar. “Pete can get his own Valentine’s Buddy.”

“He doesn’t _want_ a Valentine’s Buddy,” Andy says, twirling drum sticks at his hips, wrists coiling. “It’s pretty obvious he wants _you_.”

Sliding his hand up the neck of his guitar, Patrick scowls, “Did he pay you to say that?”

“Not yet,” Andy grins, swinging one arm out. “But I’m going to get quotes for next year.”

Patrick aimlessly wanders around the stage for the rest of the check, letting Pete babble into the microphones to make sure there isn’t feedback. He watches the back of Pete’s head, his torso, wiggling around and pressing his chin against his chest to watch his own fingers working over the bass strings.

Frowning, Patrick faces Joe’s amp, and presses his fingers into A, hard.

*

“Here’s the deal,” Patrick announces, cornering Pete as he’s coming out of one of the gnarly backstage bathrooms. Pete’s fingers are red from the show, he’s still breathing deep and heavy. “We’re not doing all that Valentine’s Day crap. No teddy bears, no chocolates, no roses -- yes black roses still count -- and -- “

He’d been listing the items off on his fingers until this point, but stops short as he tries to figure out what to say next.

“No rose petals,” Pete helps, snickering like mad.

Patrick grimaces, and nods. “So help me --“

“No rose petals!” Pete exclaims, holding his hands up. “I get it.”

Pretty much wholly unconvinced in himself, Patrick frowns, and looks at Pete’s face. His eyebrows are raised, grin still twitching at his mouth, hood pulled tight around the sides of his face, zipper done up to his chin.

“No poetry,” He adds lamely, slowly running out of items on his gigantic list of No.

Pete crosses his arms over his chest, looking thrown. “Do lyrics count?”

“What? Yes,” Patrick stutters for a minute. Do they? “I mean, what kind of lyrics are we talking here?”

Someone inches by the two of them, still hanging out in the doorway, and slips into the bathroom.

“I don’t know,” Pete shrugs and looks thoughtful. “I don’t think they count.”

Patrick knots his eyebrows. “Technically they do, I mean --“

“Semantics.” 

Hesitant to agree, Patrick half nods and adjusts his hat. “Anyway. So we can like fuck or whatever, but no idealistic crap.”

“But that’s a regular Wednesday night.”

Patrick waves one hand around dismissively, and starts to head back down the hall.

“Well, whatever,” He continues, voice echoing in the mostly empty tunnel. “Wear a festive hat or something, I don’t care.”

Grinning fully, Pete calls, “How do you feel about vests?”

Patrick hides his laughter with the sleeve of his jacket, but appreciates the crack enough to send a sneaky smile over his shoulder at Pete, still grinning back at him.

*

“No,” Patrick says, calmly, sorting his fries and packet sauce into two separate piles on the formica top table. 

Across from him, Pete’s plowing his way through a McFlurry, twirling his spoon around in the air and debating stealing one of Joe’s mini cherry pies. 

“It’s not even that -- Andy,” Pete announces, looking across to where Andy is trying to shrink down into the booth. Patrick is sitting beside him, looking disagreeable. “How do you feel about -- “

“Don’t say it,” Patrick warns, using a fry as a scare tactic, swinging it around and mentally threatening to launch it across the table top. “ _Pete_. Don’t.”

Joe mostly just looks thankful he’s been exempt from the conversation, and sits quietly at the end of the table on a cooler, watching the spectacle and munching away at his super sized fries. 

“…Large romantic gestures?” Pete finishes, glaring across the table at Patrick, but changing his wording anyways because he wants to get laid tonight, gesture or not.

Andy looks dubious, yet thoughtful. “How large are we talking here?”

“Like, what I want to do is -- “

One hand over his ear, Patrick shoves at Joe until he moves, and hurries into the back bunks. He figures if he just ignores it… nothing will uh, change. He wishes if he ignored it, it’d go away, at least.

“Maybe the Valentine’s Buddy wasn’t such a bad idea,” Andy admits, trying to break the news gently just as Pete reaches the bottom of his oreo haven. 

Frowning, Pete stares into the bottom of the black spotted cup.

*

The 14th sneaks up on Patrick like the after effects of bad Chinese food. One minute he’s playing the set, watching everyone in the crowd sing along to the words he’s been living by for years, and the next he’s in the dressing room, unplugging his laptop from the wall and realizing that it is in fact that, the 14th. 

_D-day_ , he thinks to himself miserably, tucking the power cord into his case. _Or, V-Day._

Pete follows Andy through the door with a huge grin on his face, one hand itching at a spot behind his ear. “It was just so _loud_ , man,” He’s saying, glancing over at Patrick quickly. Patrick zips his case up. 

_Here it comes,_ Patrick thinks, dropping his laptop case alongside all the junk to be carted back out to the bus. _Here comes the grand gesture, Andy’s probably in on it, too._

“Anyway,” Pete is still saying, unzipping his hoodie, entirely involved in his conversation with Andy. 

Patrick hovers until it’s time to load, but Pete never does a thing.

*

Patrick is indistinctly pissed at himself for being pissed at Pete for not doing anything. 

Like, last year had been the -- fuck, it was terrible, Patrick reflects -- last year had been Pete’s magnificent idea of writing _Pete <3 Patrick_ across thirteen cupcakes, fifteen if you included the spaces, seventeen if you count the ones Pete fucked up the spelling on, and twenty three if you added the box Joe ingested before the big reveal. 

“It was supposed to say something else,” Pete shrugged, hovering over Patrick’s shoulder as he stood in front of the cupcake mountain. “But Joe ate like, fifty or something, so I couldn’t do that…”

And the year before had been even worse: Patrick tries not to remember that one, what with the… he shakes his head, and massages his temples.

But _this_ year, all Pete does is wander around the bus like usual, and at one point his sidekick is pressed to his ear for so long Patrick’s sure it’s going to attach itself like a leech.

“You want some cereal or something?” Pete had asked, when he’d caught Patrick staring at him from the front lounge while he was pouring Fruit Loops.

Patrick had been skeptical, but accepted anyways. In the end, they both sat there crunching away on crispy-then-soggy cereal, and once Pete drank the rest of his sugar flavored milk, he got up, pressed his mouth to the side of Patrick’s shoulder, and walked back to the bunks.

 _Well fuck,_ Patrick had concluded, but kept watching.

*

“Okay, seriously.” Patrick throws open Pete’s bunk curtain, and appreciates the staggered expression he gets in return. “What the hell.”

“What?” Pete asks, wide-eyed, hands still frozen in midair sidekick-stance.

“All I hear for fucking, a month, is Valentine this, Valentine that. It is now,” Patrick yanks his wrist up dramatically to check the time. “2:04 in the morning of the 15th. So who the hell are you, and what did you do with Pete?”

A slow smirk creeping over his face, Pete shrugs, and lowers his sidekick down until it’s resting against his stomach.

“You said you didn’t want that shit, so…”

Frowning, Patrick doesn’t know what else to say, so he stares instead.

“You guys,” Joe groans from the bunk across the aisle. “I’m _asleep_.”

Pete watches Patrick’s face until he grumbles something, stalks away, and locks himself in the bathroom for a half hour.

*

“So I’ve decided,” Pete says on stage the next night, scanning the crowd, holding his bass with one hand and the mic with the other. “To fuck Valentine’s Day. The 15th is the new black, or whatever.”

The crowd cheers without knowing what they’re shouting for, but Patrick’s stomach drops as he glances across the stage at Pete. He’s grinning, taking a swig of his water bottle, and making eye contact with whatever girl.

Pete bumps shoulders with him in the middle of the next song, and smiles in this way that is ecstatically Pete. Patrick hesitantly returns the expression, but tries not to seem too happy about it.

*

“Semantics,” Pete shrugs, appearing in the space outside of Patrick’s bunk later that night, when Joe is engrossed in a video game and Andy is kind of watching him but mostly eavesdropping on the bunk hall conversation.

Patrick lowers his magazine. “What?”

“Semantics,” He repeats, like it makes more sense this time as he hoists himself up into Patrick’s bunk, rolling until he hits the wall and Patrick almost falls out into the hallway.

Unconvinced, but mostly just confused, Patrick asks, “How do you figure?” 

“So what if Valentine’s Day is on the 14th,” He shrugs, banging the back of his head against the wall when he shifts around to find a more comfortable position. “But fuck ‘em, the 15th is _my_ day.”

“That’s semantics.” Patrick raises his eyebrows. 

Pete nods, and reaches across for the magazine. “Yep,” He says, chucking whatever obscure title Patrick is reading into the abyss of the bottom of the bunk. “So by default, they’re your semantics too.”

Sighing, Patrick hesitantly works his fingers into the hair on top of Pete’s head.

“Sure,” He says, because he’s kind of in an agreeable mood. Pete, naturally, looks awfully proud of himself for converting Patrick, or at least thinking he did so. “But you do realize it’s the 16th already, right?”

Pete pffts, and leans down to steal half of Patrick’s pillow with his gigantic head. 

“So we’ll have like a week long celebration,” He concedes, breath warm against the side of Patrick’s neck. “So what.”

Patrick listens to Joe shuffling around in the kitchen, moving cereal boxes to look for a good place to plug in and recharge his cell. 

“Okay,” He finally gives in, because he doesn’t know what else to argue.

Pete is talking against the juncture of Patrick’s neck and shoulder, and sounds muffled as he says, “The 15th. It’ll be like, a national holiday in ten years.”

*

“A national holiday?” Joe kind of sounds interested in the aspect of that. Pete is sitting beside him at the kitchen table, hands folded together, after an hour long conversation debating the pros and cons of not-celebrating and then-celebrating.

Patrick pours himself a bowl of milk and cereal, then decides to sit in the back lounge with Andy.

He hears Joe admit, “That does sound kinda cool…” behind him.


End file.
